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Joint Staff urges DMS team to drop X.400-only approach

By Gregory Slabodkin

Aug 25, 1997

The high-level review team recommended expanding DMS, which is built around the international X.400 message protocol, to a dual-protocol architecture that would include the Internet's Simple Message Transfer Protocol.

The review called an inclusive architecture a more flexible implementation of DMS that would not restrict the potential 2 million DOD users of DMS to the X.400 infrastructure.

Although the DMS architecture may be evolving with the incorporation of commercial technologies, Joint Staff officials insisted that the underlying goal of DMS has remained constant.

DMS must provide a seamless, interoperable messaging system to the warfighter that works equally for tactical and nontactical traffic across all classification levels, the review said.

"Some high assurance unique functions will be necessary to satisfy high grade messaging, especially where national security interests are at stake," the Joint Staff review said. The review stressed the need to enhance system flexibility, rely on commercial products and incorporate technological advances.

The panel, which got input from the services and agencies, this month briefed acting assistant secretary of Defense for command, control, computers, communications and intelligence Anthony Valletta about its findings.

The DMS review exists in briefing chart format only. The Joint Staff will detail its findings in a report within the next 30 days.

Valletta's staff and Defense Information Systems Agency officials are evaluating the recommendations and weighing possible revisions to DMS program requirements.

DMS officials at DISA said they would not comment on the Joint Staff study until the evaluation is complete.

But outgoing DISA director Lt. Gen. Al Edmonds in June said that the agency had downsized DMS' grand design because "technology has moved fast and we need to adjust ourselves to adopt the technology changes."

DOD requirements laid out in the 1989 Multicommand Required Operational Capability served as the architectural guidelines for DMS, including computer communication protocol standards.

DMS' design is based on X.400 and X.500 international standards to meet messaging and directory service requirements. These standards have also been accepted by NATO in the Allied Communications Publication 123.

But a lot has changed in the world of commercial e-mail systems since these requirements were established, the review said.

"Technology has gotten a lot smarter since DMS was defined years ago," a Joint Staff official said. "You don't replace an aging dinosaur like AUTODIN with a baby dinosaur. The world is changing and DOD needs to take advantage of that. We need to get to the point where we don't have to rely on a dedicated DOD network but on a global network."

In 1988, when the DMS program began, X.400 was a robust, well-defined messaging protocol and SMTP was not, said Keith Attenborough, DMS product manager for Lotus Development Corp.

"Now, almost 10 years later, SMTP is the commercial de facto standard within the continental United States," he said. Messaging and data sharing have also changed, he said.

Nevertheless, some DOD officials said they are skeptical about replacing AUTODIN with a messaging system based primarily on commercial products and innovations for the tactical environment.

There has been discussion as to whether X.400 or SMTP is better, one DOD official said.

"Industry has big money, and it might be best to follow them. But solutions for the commercial world and Defense are not always the same," he said.

SMTP, which handles e-mail, is more easily implemented than X.400 but remains less robust and less capable of handling nontext data.

X.400 has the capability to transport virtually any data, alleviating the need for separate stovepipe data transmission systems.

"The panel reiterated the need for multivendor product interoperability, a hallmark of the DMS program since its inception in 1988," according to a Joint Staff statement.

Lotus, Microsoft Corp. and Enterprise Solutions Ltd. of Westlake Village, Calif., have been developing interoperable versions of X.400 client messaging software that will work over Open Systems Interconnection or TCP/IP networks and X.400 protocols.